No, You DON'T Get It [Updated w/more arguments against impeachment]

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday November 24, 2006 · 7:22 AM PST

2006/11/24 · 07:22

There was a diary posted up the other day by someone who is upset that Markos was against impeaching Bush. I read the poster's diary, looking for a coherent, logical, fact-based reason to impeach Bush. Instead, I found raw, unreasoning anger cloaked in word play.

See, even if we were to impeach and remove BOTH Bush AND Cheney -- which is about as likely, with the GOP/Media Complex running interference for them, as my winning the Powerball next week -- all that does is remove them from office.

Wanna punish Bush and Cheney? Help the Democrats hamstring him until they leave office. Work to ensure that Democrats replace them in the White House. Get Bush brought up on war crimes at The Hague. You'll have a much easier time doing that than impeaching him. [UPDATE: More after the jump.]

Here's the deal:

Even if the Democrats were able to push this process as hard as the Republicans pushed Clinton's impeachment -- and they dropped everything else they were doing for this (just as the Congressional Republicans had to do from 1998 through 2000) -- it will take them over two years to pull it off. And, just as with Clinton, they STILL might lose the vote in the Senate anyway. (Oh, and Nixon's impeachment only got as far as it did because there were still Rockefeller Republicans in Congress. Those people would soon be purged by the Bircherite hard-righties, who would, once they got Corporate America to back them over the Rockies, rode to victory with Reagan in 1980 and haven't looked back since, until now.)

Want to impeach to stop the killing in Iraq? Impeachment won't do it -- hearings, followed by defunding, will. (It's what worked in Vietnam.)

Want to impeach to protect the Constitution? You're better off backing bills like Chris Dodd's bill to restore habeas corpus (http://dodd.senate.gov/index.php?q=node/3661).

Want to impeach to make a statement? Fine -- just be aware that you're condemning the Democrats to two-plus-years of doing nothing but "making a statement".

Want to impeach to punish or for closure/retribution? Sue Bush and/or Cheney in civil or criminal court, or get a Federal prosecutor in the appropriate venue interested in pursuing a criminal case. (But better bring along a few million if you want this to actually work. And unless the criminal court can move VERY quickly, it still won't get him out of office any sooner.)

This content was created by a Daily Kos Community member.

Make YOUR voice heard!

Comments are closed on this story.